Ubuntu Developer Week

Daniel Holbach announces the upcoming Ubuntu Developer Week taking place from August 28th to August 30th in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net. "No matter if you are interested in package maintenance or integrating software into the Desktop, or learn more about the infrastructure we use, everything is covered in Ubuntu Developer Week.” Topics include “Getting Started with Ubuntu Development, ARM hacking, Writing Apps with Quickly, Python3, Fixing bugs in Ubuntu, Desktop integration, Using Juju to deploy services, Ubuntu’s QA infrastructure, Ubuntu WebApps, Ubuntu One DB, and many other bits and pieces."

LoCo News

México city, 08/Sept, 11:00am

Javier L. of the Mexican LoCo team announces plans for the Mexico City Ubuntu Global Jam event on September 8th from 11AM till nightfall at Vision Cafe. He writes that the goal is to “try to improve our favorite distribution, while eating pizza, drinking some orange juice (or coffee) and having a good time in general.”

Ubuntu Forums News

Ubuntu Forums – Staff Team Changes

Ubuntu Forums had a change of personnel. s.fox welcomes the new members of the Forum Council, Elfy and KiwiNZ, and Moderation Team, sandyd and Bucky Ball, and thanks former council members Bodhi.Zazen, Overdrank, and moderators who stepped down, for the time and effort they put in.

The Planet

Ubuntu TV: Ubuntu TV Weekly Update #7

Jim Hoddap once again brings the weekly update from the Ubuntu TV team, including:

Unity 2D has been removed. Unity 3D is the future, and it is now. What this means for Ubuntu TV is that the foundation is in place. There are aspects of the TV UI that still need to be ported to Unity 3D.

The TV team is hard at work helping to implement the Unity Previews user experience for 12.10 which will directly benefit the TV UI.

He also shares regular updates on the progress of NUX, Unity 3D, Lenses and Scopes, and more. He wraps up the post by sharing details of how others can get involved.

Benjamin Kerensa: Got Ubuntu Web Banners?

Canonical Design Team: New focus for wallpaper submissions

Iain Farrell of the Canonical Design Team explains the new process for wallpaper submissions in the Quantal cycle. They will be limiting shipped wallpapers on the CD to 10, submissions from each contributor to one, and have created some guidelines to ensure "what we get feels at home on the desktop."

Martin Pitt announces the release of Apport 2.5, which provides better support for third-party PPAs and packages by allowing package hooks to define a new crash database directly. This version also drops gksu and moves to PolicyKit.

Jonathan Riddell: Help out Kubuntu

Jonathan Riddell calls for volunteers in the development cycle of Kubuntu. He lists out the various areas where help is needed. Volunteers can join the conversation and lend their support on the IRC channel #kubuntu-devel

Victor Tuson Palau: Ubuntu ARMv8.. ready for hardware bring up!

Victor Tuson Palau shares details of how “the road to 14.04 starts now” with plans related to the new 64 bit architecture introduced in ARMv8. Palau writes that with “the test kernel builds, we’re able to start low-level testing of ARMv8 hardware as soon as they become available.”

Daniel Holbach: Ubuntu Packaging Guide has finally landed

Daniel Holbach announces the launch of the Ubuntu packaging guide, which can be browsed online at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/CallforTesting/Walkthrough or installed on 12.10 with the “sudo apt-get install ubuntu-packaging-guide” command. He thanks the many contributors, and calls for help in fixing bugs and translating.

Nicholas Skaggs: Ubuntu QA goes social

After reviewing responses from a recent QA wiki saying “the team was unknown by others in the greater ubuntu community and beyond”, several members of the team proposed creating social media accounts. Nicholas Skaggs shares the newly updated QA Contacts page which now includes links to social media accounts, including Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.

12.04.1

Rick Spencer talks about the 12.04.1 LTS release of Ubuntu, which was “upcoming” at the time of this article but has since been released. Several new features are discussed, including bug fixes, upcoming support for ARM processors, Calxeda SOC, and Ubuntu Cloud Archive.

In The Press

Minor improvements coming in Ubuntu Linux update release

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, of ZDNet, reports on a slew of minor improvements coming to the first update of Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS. These include a raft of bug fixes and security patches, including all patches affecting 12.04 LTS released through August 16, 2012. The release also includes support for Calxeda SOC, and the debut of Ubuntu Cloud Archive. Ubuntu Cloud Archive is an OpenStack software repository, which includes support for Folsom, the upcoming release of OpenStack, currently set for release on September 27th.

Ubuntu 12.10 Pushes Sandy Bridge Further

Michael Larabel of Phoronix shares new benchmark data comparing Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10, showing nearly across the board improvements using Intel graphics cards and OpenGL. These improvements are due, in part, to enhancements made across the stack as well as in Unity and Compiz.

Ubuntu Server Plans to Move Away From 32-Bit Computing

The Var Guy reports that according to release notes for the upcoming 12.10 version of Ubuntu Server, 32-bit systems will no longer be supported, at least not on the live-image installs. Support for 32-bit will remain on the Minimum Install CD and netboot, as will support for 32-bit applications.

Coverflow Returns to Unity in Ubuntu 12.10

Joey Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! writes that "coverflow" views, which was due to ship as part of Ubuntu 12.04, has been added to Unity‘s development branch for Ubuntu 12.10. Sneddon explains that this view allows one to browse items by dragging them horizontally with the mouse, rather than the usual ‘drop down, vertical’ approach currently used in Unity.

Gnome Online Accounts To Ship By Default In Ubuntu 12.10

Saurav Modak of Muktware shares details about Gnome Online Accounts, a new project integrating online services with many different desktop applications. Ubuntu developers are working to better integrate these services within Unity. As a result of this effort, Ubuntu 12.10 will ship Gnome Online Accounts by default.

Ubuntu 12.10 Will Ship With Older Version of Nautilus

Joey Sneddon of OMG! Ubuntu! reports that the latest Nautilus 3.5.x will not include the popular type-ahead and split-pane views. These changes, as well as a streamlined UI redesign, required Ubuntu to stick with an older, but more feature rich version of Nautilus for Ubuntu 12.10. The newer version of Nautilus will be available in the repositories.

Glossary of Terms

Ubuntu - Get Involved

The Ubuntu community consists of individuals and teams, working on different aspects of the distribution, giving advice and technical support, and helping to promote Ubuntu to a wider audience. No contribution is too small, and anyone can help. It's your chance to get in on all the community fun associated with developing and promoting Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate